Bush, Blair in dock at "house of horrors" summit

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 (Reuters) About 2,000 peace activists applauded today as the leaders of the United States and Britain were branded ''fascist war criminals'' at a conference featuring gruesome exhibits of their alleged crimes.

Outspoken former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, who hosted the conference in Kuala Lumpur, won a standing ovation after opening it with a call for George W Bush and Tony Blair to be tried by an unofficial tribunal for war crimes in Iraq.

''We shouldn't hang Blair if the tribunal finds him guilty,'' said Mahathir, who seemed to save his strongest venom for the British prime minister in an hour-long speech illustrated by pictures of wounded children, deformed babies and tortured men.

''He should always carry the label war criminal, killer of children and liar.'' Mahathir, a controversial figure whose own government was accused of human rights abuses bordering on torture, has been leading a campaign to highlight what he calls the human-rights abuses and hypocrisy of US-led forces fighting for democracy in the West Asia.

That campaign reached new heights of graphic intensity today, with an exhibit of alleged war crimes by US forces and their allies over the decades, from Hiroshima to Iraq.

As Mahathir spoke in the main conference room, packed with students and legions of his supporters, tape-recorded screams of tortured men and orphaned babies echoed around the War Crimes Exhibition, a house of horrors on the floor below.

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